Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind listener Mail. My name is Robert Lamb.
And I am Joe McCormick. And on listener Mail episodes, we read back some of the messages that you have sent into the Stuff to Blow your Mind email address. If you've never gotten in touch before and you would like to, why not give it a try this week? You can write us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. We appreciate messages of all types, especially if you have something to add to a topic
we've recently talked about on the show. If you have just something interesting you want to share with us, whether even if it's totally random, that's always fine. If you have corrections, if you have comments, if you have questions, if you want to suggest a topic for the future, or suggest a movie for Weird House Cinema, whatever it is, send it our way contact at stuff to Blow your
dot com. And if you write in, there is a chance that your message may be featured on a future listener Mail episode like this one.
That's right, We read all of it. We don't always have time to respond directly to it and not everything gets onto the podcast, obviously, but we will read anything you said us.
A very weird house heavy batch this time, which is fine, so be it. But I think first maybe we should get into some responses to our episodes of Star Trek Week.
That's right, We're just coming off of Star Trek Week, the first Star Trek Week celebrated here on stuff to blow your mind. But if folks loved it, we'll come back and do it again next year.
All right, rob do you mind if I do this one from Elena?
Yes, Elena, that you do mind? Well, I do mind, but I'm swallowing my feelings on this one.
Right, Okay, This is from Elena. Subject line Turkish Star Trek. Hello, Robert and Joe. I just listened to the episode about the Star Trek Salt Monster, one of the most memorable monster designs in the show in my opinion, and the
creepy moths. This is referencing the first of two core episodes we did during Star Trek Week, where we talked about the first ever episode of Star Trek, the first one ever on TV called The Man Trap, which was about a salt vampire, a shape shifting creature that sucked the salt out of your body through with like suckers that attached to the face, and that, of course led us to a biology conversation about moths that in various ways will parasitize you for salt, will suck salt from
your tears or even from your blood. So Elena goes on to say it immediately reminded me of oh Mayer the Tourist in Star Trek, a nineteen seventy three Turkish film. It's a parody movie that takes major plot inspiration from the Man Trap episode years ago. I managed to watch it with English subtitles and it was a fun experience. I also recall scenes borrowed from other notable episodes, like a fight scene between Kirk and what was supposed to be the Gorn Rob. I dug up some screenshots from
Omer the Tourist in Star Trek. I attached them in the outline for you to see. Here, we have a I think this is supposed to be Spock in a yellow shirt, but he does have the pointy years in Spock's hair, so I think that's him. We got some like muscly shirtless guy in a speedo. I don't know what that's supposed to be. The poster appears to have Godzilla on it. I don't know if that's a mashup of Godzilla and Gorn.
Yeah, some sort of fire breathing reptile.
And also some characters standing around in what might be Roman ruins that they're using as a set here. Yeah, yeah, that's an interesting choice. But also having some Star Trek uniforms in colors that I don't remember from the show, like we've got a you know, you've got your red shirts and you've got your yellow shirts. Here we have a brown shirt and then kind of a teal green skirt.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, this looks interesting. I have to admit this one was not on my radar. I'm familiar by reputation with like Turkish Star Wars and some other b cinema examples from Turkish film, and there are a few Turkish movies that are still on the list for Weird House Cinema. Oh yeah, but we haven't really gotten around to them just yet. We'll have to remedy that in the months ahead.
Elena says. Since it was released before Star Trek the Motion Picture, it's technically the first movie set in the Star Trek universe. Amazing. This is probably too strange even for weird house cinema. Oh, Elena, you should listen this Friday, by the way, but I wanted to share this oddity from Turkish cinema anyway, Elena.
This is exactly the sort of weird house cinema listener mail I like to receive. Yeah, clue me in about something weird out there that was totally not on my radar.
Exactly. Thank you so much.
All right. We also heard from Jared Jared Wrightson and says thank you for Star Trek week. Listening to the episodes really brought back memories of sitting around the TV watching Star Trek with my dad, both the original series and the next generation. Sadly, he passed away due to complications of COVID in twenty twenty, but this week's episode
brought back some great memories of him. My dad was a diehard Trekie, so much so that I did not watch a Star Wars movie until I was an adult, as it was considered not as good in our house. I think his love for Star Trek was influenced by his love of other non sci fi shows such as
westerns and cereals. Such as Bonanza and gun Smoke. Something about the portrayal of flawed characters coming together to do what was right struck a chord with him and for me, really formed a perspective on life that I did not
fully recognize until adulthood. As an adult, I have learned what a cultural stepping stone Star Trek truly was, and knowing when and where my father grew up in rural Appalachia, watching shows like Star Trek would have been considered progressive for the time and place, with different ethnicities being portrayed and given rank and importance on the crew. Star Trek's decision to step in that direction help the generation of TV watchers become more accepting of others, even if they
were aliens. Thanks again, Live Long and prosper Jared.
Yeah, I think this is a common reception experience that the people report, even outside of not just being in rural Appalachia, I mean all over.
I think, yeah, absolutely. And also the connection to Westerns is definitely worth noting as well. I don't know how much we stress that in our episodes during Star Trek Week, but Star Trek does come out of the world of TV Westerns in many respects. I mean a lot of the players, of course, were in westerns. Many of the Riders had worked in westerns, and a good bit of that Western DNA as president in the show.
I think you can say that about Star Wars as well. I mean, yeah, yeah, some ways, it's got some gunslinger stuff in there.
I mean, really, the TV and film westerns cap a huge shadow. I mean, you hear folks like John Carpenter for instance, Yeah, you know, very few of his films are one hundred percent Westerns. I think he has like what one full blown Western in the filmography, but he credits Westerns like across his filmography for being a heavy influence on at least the sort of the form and function of the pictures.
That's right. I think for a lot of the directors working in roughly that generation growing up with Westerns, it was just it was an influence on all of them, even if it wasn't totally their thing. So it's kind of like, even if you're not a diehard Star Wars or Star Trek fan, you know, most people making films coming up nowadays have some of that influence on their childhood, right right, all right. This next message is from Bert Bert says, Hey, Robert and Joe love the show. It
keeps the long drives between job sites interesting. If you think I have some worthwhile thoughts here, I'd be honored if you include it in one of your listener mail episodes. I was listening to the Transporters and Consciousness Star Trek episode and I thought that the swamp Man thought experiment was interesting but flawed. A quick refresher. This is the thought experiment by the philosopher Donald Davidson, which was saying, Okay, imagine I go out walking in a swamp. I get
struck by lightning. My body is completely obliterated, there's nothing left, and just by coincidence, a tree nearby is also struck by lightning, and it gets turned into an exact atom for Adam replica of my body, and it can go about my business and do everything I do. It acts exactly as I would in every scenario. It's a perfect
copy of me. But Davidson's argument was, despite the fact that swamp man is a perfect copy of me and can behave exactly as I would, it actually does not have thoughts and the signifiers of its mental activity that it thinks, you know when it thinks about a dog. This is not really about adult because it has never met a dog. So it was interrogating the idea of
what the aboutness of our thoughts really is. So Bert's response continues, the Swampman copy might never have experienced a dog or the original version's friend John, but it has all of the memories from the original. It has the memories of the experience, the memories of interactions with other minds, the memories of petting the dog. It has the knowledge and the feeling of what the experiences were like. Without that knowledge, it would not have the image or concept
of what a dog or a friend is. So the recreated Swampman or Spock or McCoy is created a thinking being with the full knowledge and experience of what the original new and experienced. Yeah, Bert, I think this is a common response, and this is what a lot of Davidson's critics would argue. And this is sort of along the lines of what Daniel Dinnett was arguing in response to the idea. But Bert goes on to say, there
is a second flaw. If this Sampman did not have the connections to understand what a dog or a friend or a coffee cup is then he would not be able to speak intelligently. He might call a dog a rocket, or a friend a dandelion, but it's extremely unlikely he could formulate a legible sentence. I think Davidson and Dinnett we're both off the mark on this one. Both Davidson, Swampman and Dinnet's objections to it are much more applicable
to large language model ais. An AI can be programmed with definitions and with photos describing to it what things are, but it will have no actual experience, not even secondhand experience. It can know, but until it actually has the experience, it cannot truly understand. But as Dinnet points out, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck, most people would say it's a duck, which changes the question from is an AI thinking before
it experiences? To are there any differences between what an aides before it experiences and what it does after? It also adds the question if there are, do the differences matter? That's probably more than long enough for one email. Hope you found it interesting, bert.
Oh, Yes, absolutely, thanks for writing in Bertie. We touched on how this philosophical discussion may or may not apply to AI a little bit in the episode, but you know, clearly, as you point out here, you can really go into the deep end on this one as well.
Yeah, I think this is actually a very good question. Clearly, we learn from experience, and is there some quality, some important quality to the nature of our experience which enables us to learn and understand which cannot really be achieved by feeding a machine like discrete, separate little images that are not actually part of a continuous experience like we believe we have so like our experience of seeing and interacting with dogs throughout our life, is there something actually
importantly different about that than just like having a large language model associate the word dog and other words in a cloud around the word dog with lots, you know, millions of different pictures of dogs. Is there actually something importantly different there in those two different kinds of learning.
I don't know exactly what it would be, but it strikes me as totally plausible that there's something important missing that contributes to what we mean when we say understanding that's missing from the training model of these AIS, but is present in the human beings experience of the world.
Yeah, absolutely, I mean we have skin in the game, and there are different ways to interpret how that applies. All right, up, next we go. We got a very nice email from Alec, who writes in and says, Hi, Robert Joe at all. My name is Olt. I'm a grad student at U Chicago studying the evolution and mechanics
of the mammal middle ear. I am defending later this fall and have been doing a lot of reflecting on the things that have kept my love of science alive, and thus wanted to extend my deep gratitude for your show. I have been listening since I was an undergrad, and your topics and the way you approach your topics, particularly your deep dives into how fictional organisms would function based on real biology, have always kept my basic curiosity and
need to learn alive, even against grad school burnout. I don't think it is an exaggeration to say the stuff to Blow your mind podcast has played a pivotal role in my development as a scientist. Thank you for the great work you do. Cheers Alec. At ps. Have you considered an episode on why elves, vulcans, etc. Have powenty years from the folklore perspective. Where does that originate from a biological perspective? What's the adaptive significance?
Great questions? Has this come up on the show before? I would be surprised if it hadn't.
I was actually researching this a little bit prior to Star Trek week because I was considering it as a topic. So may come back to this sooner rather than later.
But also, Alex, thank you so much for the message. This kind of stuff, it feels so nice, warms my heart. It. Yeah, it really really does mean a lot to hear things like this, So thank you so much, and best of luck with your thesis or dissertation defense. All right, this next message, let's do some of the responses to our Saint Swithin episode. This one comes from Francois subject line about Saint Swithin's revenge and apologies in advance. I'm gonna
have to read some French in this one. My pronunciation, I'm sure is going to be abysmal, but I'll do my best, Francois says, Dear Robert and Joe, I just listened to your podcas cast about Saint Swithin, and when you read the saying Saint Swithin's day. If thou dost reign for forty days, it will remain Saint Swithin's day. If thou be fair for forty days, twill reign ne mere and Francois says, I thought, oh, it is an Irish Saint Medard. Imagine my delight when you referenced our
Saint Medard. This is easily the second most used meteorological saying in France. However, the version you used is different from the one I know, and because I heard it
multiple times on TV, it is the official version. It says see plu a la Saint Medard il pluvera forty jour plutard a muang ke la sam Barnabie luis coup le erb sioux lapide and so Francois here has a translation, which is, if it rains on Saint Medardas day, it will rain forty days later, unless Saint Barnabas pulls the r from below his feet, literally cuts the grass beneath his feet. Francois says, this side steps the issue of
forty days of uninterrupted rain. Oh yeah, as we discussed in the episode, that that's totally very implausible and that's basically never gonna happen. It side steps the issue of forty days of uninterrupted rain. It just says that if it rains on the eighth of June, it will rain on the eleventh or eighteenth of July, a much likelier coincidence. I must admit that I found the version you used
is the one on Catholic dot net. In English, in case you wonder, the most used meteorological saying in France is Noel albacon paquet autisson meaning Christmas on the balcony, Easter by the fire, often nowadays parodied as a niege, and November Noel and December meaning snow in November, Christmas in December. Thank you for your podcast, best regards, Francois and then final ps, still awaiting your take on Podawn, which, by the way, that's the French title of Donkey Skin
with Catherine Deneuve. We will get there eventually. It's on the list, Yes.
I am. I have to say. It looks like as of this Friday we will already be diving into our horror selections for October. But usually our pattern is that once we get out of October, it's time for a little palate cleansing, so maybe a little fantasy and definitely a little noir. So I don't know, maybe that'll be the time of donkey skin.
M Yeah, but I like your parody saying about December, if I understand it correctly, by the way I mean. It is often a joke we have around here in the American Southeast that like, yeah, it's going to be hot on Christmas Day, which it sometimes is.
All Right, This next one comes to us from Hugh. Hugh says Robert, Joe and JJ. Hello there. It's been a while since I've written. You guys have been doing such a great job that I have had few questions and little of use to add. Your recent episode on Saint Swiven made me think of that an exploration of the history of sainthood might be an interesting subject. It turns out that during the early Middle Ages there were many many local, regional, and magical saints chosen by communities
large and small. The official saint was part of the Church's move to homogenize doctrine and consolidate power during the Late Middle Ages. In early modern times, this is all as far as I can remember, you understand, but you get the idea keep up the good work here.
Oh that's interesting, So, Hugh, if I understand you, right, the idea is that sainthood begins as a more grassroots or organic phenomenon, and then later there's the idea of the church should really be, you know, having a system to decide who is and isn't a saint, which would play into Saint Swithin by the way, because as we discussed, he's called Saint Swithin, but he was never actually officially canonized by the Catholic Church and not an official Catholics.
Right right, Yeah, yeah, So it's certainly a fascinating topic. It would just be a matter of figuring out the exact sort of the exact form the question takes. I guess for treatment on stuff to blow your mind, but I'm always fascinated by this sort of topic. So yeah, well I've put it on the list.
I mean, we could look at it in a larger sense, going just beyond the Catholic thing of like who is holy? Like why do we decide that certain people are holy? Yeah?
And then what's left of the real person once we've made them holy? Yeah. We got into that a little bit and two previous episodes where we talked about saints. Yeah, so yeah, this is this topic probably has legs.
All right. This next message comes from Kieran. Kieran says, Hi, Joe and Rob, this is Kieran from New Zealand. With all this talk of Wallace. This is in response in part by the way to our episode episodes on Alfred Russell Wallace and the Wallace line. Kieran says, with all this talk of my mind immediately jumped to a potential candidate for weird house cinema, and that is the fantastic
two thousand and six film called The Fall. In the film, it features a fictional Wallace and his monkey sidekick named Darwin. Now one quick note, I had I looked this movie up, and Kieran, I don't. I hesitate to correct you because you've seen the film and I haven't. But when I looked it up, it seems to me like it might be the other way around, that there's a Darwin character with a monkey named Wallace. But again I haven't seen it,
so maybe there's something I'm missing. Anyway, Kieran continues Wallace and Darwin feature and story in a story within the story in the film, though not main characters. They play an important part in the events of the imaginary story featured in the film. It's honestly one of the most visually beautiful films I've ever seen, A criminally underrated masterpiece with plenty of interesting content to fulfill the weird house quota.
Is this by the same director of The Cell with Jennifer Lopez and Vincent and Afrio.
It absolutely is. Yes, Tarsian Tarsi singh. I think he just goes by Tarsan. Yeah, and I have I have seen The Fall. It's I have not seen it since it came out. It had a young Lee Pace in it before Lee Pace got completely ripped. A great actor. Lipace a big fan and enjoying really enjoying him on foundation of late. But yeah, the Fall, I remember, like The Cell being just a you know, a visual treat, but I don't remember much about the plot. It's just been too long since i've seen it.
Well, I'll have to check it out. Thanks for the recommendation, and.
It's very possible we might come back and do The Cell. Yeah, The Cell is one I do remember getting very excited for when it came out, and and certainly the visuals did not disappoint at the time.
If I recall correctly, that was one of the movies that Roger Ebert really went out on a limb for. He was like, this is awesome. You've got to see it.
Sure enough to sell four stars.
All right, let's see. Karing goes on to say, one of the things I also love about Weird House is how both of you have an immense talent for unpacking a film and succinctly describing its concepts and themes. Therefore, another film I would love to hear given the Weird House treatment is a childhood favorite of mine. It's Terry Gilliams The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Many consider this film to be an utter folly in the gilliam film catalog, but I have a serious soft spot for this one.
It too, can be considered visually to be a ravishing spectacle, full of amazing practical effects, brilliant sets, puppetry, costumes, and so much more that leaves one thinking, how on earth did they manage to get all this shot? This must have been a nightmare to film, which apparently it was.
There's also an interesting tension I am sure you would both like between the black and white childhood idea of myth, imagination, heroism, and fantasy, and the adult gray world of reason, rationality, bureaucracy, political expediency, and so forth. I really feel you would both do an excellent job at unpacking this film with its warts and all, discussing its production, themes, story, and
the rollicking good time it truly is. Thanks so much for your excellent show, your gifts for science communication, your respect for differing worldviews, and your love of pop culture always keeps the show fun. Keep up the good work, Yours, sincerely, Kieran. Well, thank you so much for all the kind words. Kieran, It's been a long time since I've seen Baron Munchausen.
I remember back when I saw it, I both found it difficult to watch and also really respected it, and I think I had that thought about it more than
one Terry Gilliam film. It was some Gillian films I just straight up love, but this one I remember thinking it had some parts that were not the most gripping, but also it had a lot of just weird integrity, strange performances, like when it like Robin William This plays the Man in the Moon on it and he's so weird in it, and yeah, I don't know, there's been a lot that I've forgotten about it by this point, but I would like to go back and revisit it totally.
Yeah, we've never done a Terry Gilliam film for Weird House Cinema, and it's of course he's on my mind anytime we're coming up with selections. But I guess I kind of have a certain amount of decision fatigue when it comes to him, because he's made so many iconically weird films like do I go with Brazil? Do I go with Time Bandits? Do I go with this selection?
Do I maybe go a little further back, or do I know, take a chance on one of the more recent pictures, you know, because there's going to be something. He's one of those directors where even in his quote unquote lesser works, there's going to be something to talk about. There's going to be some nugget of absolute gold in there. So yeah, for that reason, never actually selected something from his filmography. Jabberwakee, that's another one.
I saw that one when I was way too young. I did not I did not fully get the vision I think at the time. But yeah, I think when I saw that, I had also seen Monty Python in The Holy Grail when I was really too young to have seen that, and I was like, I just wanted another movie like that, and Jabberwaukee was like weirder than what I was bargaining for.
Yeah, I mean, when you talk about the vision with Terry Gilliam, it's always a mad vision, So I think it's always going to be a little bit challenging one way or another.
All Right, you want to do some straight up weird house messages.
Sure, Sure, let's see what do we have here. This one comes to us from Scott subject line mor Locke perspective. This is, of course a response to our episode on the nineteen sixty film adaptation of The Time Machine. Hi, Robert Joe. You'll doubtless here from many people on this, but there is a story of the time traveler's adventures from the Morlocks perspective. David Lake's nineteen eighty one novel
The Man Who Loved Morlocks. It's been a while since I read it, but must confess it didn't seem highly memorable, in part because the Morlocks weren't presented as sufficiently alien in their psychology and culture as I would have expected from post humans after eight hundred thousand years of evolution. Instead, they seem more or less like very normal human beings who had simply been misunderstood by a plundering traveler. But perhaps other readers have different and more positive reviews.
Scott, Yeah, you know, I'm actually of two minds about the idea of taking, you know, doing a whole treatment of a story where you flip the hero villain dynamic. You know, there's like that classic example we've talked about
on the show before. I've actually not read this novel, but there's that famous take on Lord of the Rings which flips it all around, which is like from the Orc's perspective, and the org are actually like nice people who are just like trying to live in peace, and they are being brutally assaulted by the wizards and the elves, and so it's the kind of thing where that can be really interesting if you have an interesting take on it.
But it could also be too easy, right you could just say, like I'm just gonna flip everything and then maybe not bring a lot of imagination to it. It literally is just flipping everything. I'm not acute, by the way, I haven't read this book, so I'm not accusing David Lake of doing that. I don't have an opinion on it, but I can see how a hero hero villain flipping novel could easily be actually kind of unremarkable or uninteresting.
Yeah, you would have to play it just right, and and they're different. It also comes down to like, exactly what sort of story are you trying to tell? What sort of points are you trying to make about the more locks or or the other factions or characters in the narrative. So yeah, yeah, I was not familiar with this book though, or really this particular author. I noticed that he also wrote another book, The Truth about Weena, from nineteen ninety eight.
I wonder if that's a Is that a sequel to the.
I guess so, or at least it's you know, it's within the time Machine universe.
Yeah, yeah, I may have already said this a minute ago, But the more I'm thinking about it, the more it's just like, for a story to work this way, you have to find some way to make it original. It can't just be the same story. But actually the bad guys are the good guys, you know, it would need to bring something new or creative.
Yeah, I mean, we can all think of stellar examples of this. For example, one that we've mentioned on the show many times is John Gardner's Grindle, which tells the story of Bailwil from the monstrous perspective. But yeah, like that's an excellent treatment, an excellent use of this basic flip the script method. So not every not every flipping of the script is going to be as good as Grindle.
And it's basically a new story. It's yeah, just yeah, all right. This next message is from Matt subject line of Vertue. Hey, Robin, Joe, Matt here, just listen to
your Vault episode on Black Sabbath. And I was wondering if you have seen the twenty twenty three Oh, by the way, that's the Mario Bava film Black Sabbath, not the band, though the band got their name from the title of the film, seeing it on a marquee, but yes, let's see, Matt says, I was wondering if you have seen the twenty twenty three French horror film The Verduolac, directed by Adrian bo. It is a weird and creepy
new adaptation of Alexei Tolstoy's story. I loved the Black Sabbath vignette, but it's interesting to see the story through the lens of a modern filmmaker. I was particularly weirded out by the use of vampire folklore regarding the chewing of garments on a different Black Sabbath topic. I have seen two different versions, both of which I believe were
dubbed into English. It's been some years since I watched it, but I think the alternate version of the telephone, which is one of the segments in the movie, the more jallowy one with less supernatural elements. Matt says it removed all reference to lesbian relationships and had the phone calls coming from the main character's dead husband. I imagine that would be the American International Pictures release. Anyway, I love the show and look forward to future episodes. Matt oh Man,
I can't imagine a bowdlerized version of Black Sabbath. That seems wrong.
Yeah. Absolutely. Now, as for this twenty twenty three film, yes, well, no, no one. Yes, no, I have not seen it, but yes, I'm familiar with it because this one has been eyeing me from the shelves at Video Drum here in Atlanta for a while. It looks like a unique treatment on the vampire legend with live action and what I believe puppetry or stop motion, one or both of the two used to depict the titular monster.
I have not seen it, but I'm very interested. JJ has seen it, by the way. I remembered that because he had brought it up with me in the past. But JJ just confirmed he thinks it would be a good weird house movie. So that's a couple of votes in its favor.
Excellent, all right. The next one comes to us from Doug and in this one, he's writing in response to our Weird House Cinema episode on Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. He says, cap this podcast on a whim and absolutely loved it. Willy Wonka in the Chocolate Factory is one of my most favorite films. I used to torture my children with on movie nights. They're all grown now, and I hope to share it with the grandkids someday. And although the film is over fifty years old, it
seems much of its content is still relatable. Candy and imagination never go out of style. The over the top performance of Gene Wilder and the dream like songs are timeless masterpieces. This is one of the few movies I keep on DVD to have accessible. Hopefully we don't lose DVD players too, so.
The market for them is has already greatly narrowed. But you can still, to my relief, watch films on disc and you can still get new players. I hope that's something that comes back. I hope we just haven't like given up and let the streamers fully win.
No, absolutely, and I think once I think most of you are beginning to realize, if you're not already one hundred percent on board of this already, that having access to physical media means you have access to your media that you can count on long term. And that's why if you have some sort of a video store in your cities, like certainly support and chaerish it because there can and and beyond that as well also your libraries,
whatever disks are available to your libraries. This this is absolutely worth worth supporting and getting behind, because yeah, otherwise it's just completely up in the air, like, well, will this film be available streaming next week, next month? You don't know, And then if it is, what version will it be in what voices in the world might influence what cut of a film you get to see later on.
So yeah, these are all excellent reasons to look after your films and make sure you have access to them, to them the way you want them.
Yeah. Here here by the way, if you want to write in and let us know about your local video rental store. If you've got something like a video drome or like a future shock video in your hometown and you want to write in and tell us about it what you love about it, please do contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Absolutely anyway. Doug continues here and says, when Charlie and the Chocolate Factory came out, I was excited to see a modernization of Willy Wonka, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. What a perfect combination.
Or was it?
I don't know. It was filled with imagination and depths over the top performance, but it lacked the connection with the audience, and maybe I wasn't the right audience. I don't know. It never connected with me. Thank you so much for the imaginative distraction. It was fun going down the road today, Doug. Yeah, it sounds like Doug was pretty much in the same boat as we were with the Tim Burton Willy Wonka picture. Like, you know, was it creative that certainly that it has some really neat
sets and costumes and so forth. Yeah, absolutely, But yeah, I can also say it didn't really stick with me in the same way that the original did.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean I can totally love a Burton depth collab. I mean, the movie ed Wood is a long time one of my favorites. This is great, but yeah, this one never never looked like something I could endure. All right, This next message is from Bert. Oh I didn't check to see Is this the same bird as our previous Burt message or a different Bert. I'm not sure, but this is also about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, or actually it's about Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
because it's the movie. Bert says, there was so much I wanted to say as you went through the movie, but I was driving and couldn't take notes. So Bert, I'm glad you didn't, so I will limit myself to two observations. First, I think all of the children actually suffer from the same problem obsession. Augustas Gloup is obsessed with food, Veruk Assault is obsessed with herself, Violet Beauregard is obsessed with gum Man gum That is a pretty narrow obsession, and Mike TV is obsessed with TV only
Charlie doesn't have any obsessions. The second observation I'd like to make is I love your take on Willy Wonka as a proto supernatural character, possibly with supernatural enemies, he has to contend with sort of a mister Rourke of the candy world. I think that's referring to the Ricardo Montlebond character on Fantasy Island who can make your fantasies come true, has a supernatural kind of quality, a mister
Rourke of the candy world. Just as we eventually learned that mister Rourke is a direct opponent of Satan, we could possibly learned that in the future that Slugworth is actually the Evil County counterpart to Willy Wonka. Oh, like a demonic candy maker of the rival company. Yeah, I guess not the Slugworth we see in the movie, because that was a counterfeit slug Worth that was actually a
servant of the Lord opposing as a demon. But Bert finishes by saying I'm not an author, but I may have to try to write that story.
Bert.
Go for it, man, Yeah, nothing to stop you.
Slug Worth does show up in the recent Wonka film, twenty twenty three's Wonka. Oh, and you know they don't really play up the magical mystical aspects of this character, but he is played by the excellent Patterson Joseph. So again, you know, I wouldn't say that twenty twenty three's Wonka is on the same level as the original Willy Wonka picture for me personally, but I thought it was a lot of fun.
I haven't seen it, can't comment.
All right, This next one comes to us from Amy, and this one is going to be a correction. And I just want to note here that JJ and I have already gone back to our episode and plugged in a little note about this. So the correction is also present in the Weird House Cinema episode moving forward. So Amy says, hi, guys, I listened to you every single morning, and I was delighted to hear you do WILLI walcome
the chocolate factory on Weird House? And I never want to be a nitpicker, but I wanted to let you know before you get the will actually people talking about Gene Wilder, you mentioned Blazing Saddles best comedy ever and said it quote would lead to four more films with Richard Pryor. Richard Pryor was set to star in Blazing Saddles, but he was too spicy for the producers. Cleveland Little replaced him and hit it out of the park. Thank
you for attending Mike cleveland Little fan Club meeting. Love you guys.
Amy. Yeah, so, I did not know that Richard Pryor had been in the running to play the lead in Blazing Saddles. He was one of the screenwriters on the movie, but apparently he was also Melbrooks's original choice to play the lead the character of bart. Brooks himself has claimed in multiple accounts that even though he wanted prior for the role, the executives at Warner Brothers would not allow it because they said he was uninsurable due to previous
drug arrests. I don't know if that story is true. It had like it's never been confirmed by anybody on the Warner Brothers side, but that's what Melbrooks always said. Though apparently after he was ruled out for the role, prior did recommend Cleveland Little.
For the role. Yeah, yeah, and true enough, he's great in it. Yeah, real quick. I want to throw in a note here that, of course, the Willywalk episode of Weird House I dedicated to my mom, who had passed away the month before. A number of you heard that and wrote in with some very nice comments, and I just want to just want to say I appreciate it. All right, Joe, I'm going to pass it back to you.
Here we have an excellent one from Lindsay here. Lindsay's listener mail writing is kind of like a work of poetry, a little stream of consciousness.
Here Lindsey says, hey, y'all think about Grizzly too. Weird stuff around it. Shot in nineteen eighty three, finally released in twenty twenty. Shot in Hungary, portraying a nineteen eighty
three music festival in a US national park. Evil promoter played by Louise Fletcher, very young, George Clooney, Charlie Sheen, Laura Dern, John ry S Davies as a French frontier trapper, bad accent, fringe, buckskin single shot twelve Gage with native decorations, A bunch of other eighties character actor names awful film errors, showing a cartridge flying as a bullet kickstarting an entirely different motorcycle from when he was riding National Park jeep
with government plates, several brit bands, and what I think was a Hungarian rock band singing in Hungarian. I have a pretty high tolerance for weird, but this one was off the charts. Has to be a twisted story behind it, somewhere right on Lindsey WHOA.
Will color me intrigued interested putting it on the list exactly? All right? Here's another one. This one comes to us from Ian and says, dear Robin Joe, I wanted to write in to suggest a movie for weird house Cinema, The Adventures of Buckeroo Bonzai Across the Eighth Dimension. Somehow I had managed to never hear of this movie, despite being a child of the eighties and it apparently being a cult classic from that era, until my wife and I stumbled across it on Amazon Prime the other day,
and boy was it a treat. You have Peter Weller and Jeff Goldbloom battling rubber suit aliens from another dimension led by an evil John Lithgow It's campy and janki and borderline nonsensical, and a joy from the start to the finish. The one thing that disappointed me about the movie was that the sequel promised and the credits never materialized. Though Buckeroo Bonzai against the World of Crime does sound like a step down from fighting trans dimensional aliens, that
travesty aside. I would love to hear y'all discuss it. Your thoughts are always a treat. Thanks for the great show, Ian I.
This is a wonderful suggestion. John Smallberry's must be heard.
And I also have to say I do in general love love slash hate it. It's a it's a mix of feelings. When you have a film set up a sequel that sounds really cool and it never happens, Yeah every time. It's like when you do that, you create an alternate timeline where that movie exists and we can only dream what ourselves are like in that timeline.
Can I can I offer a counter opinion though this maybe this is the love half of your love hate relationship with this. I have come, as I've gotten older, more and more to appreciate all the different varieties of something leaving you wanting more. I think that's actually a
good thing. And I when I was younger, I would be more inclined to be upset that there could have been more that we didn't get, and now to kind of feel positive, feel kind of like love and gratefulness when all there is is enough to make me want more instead of there being more that isn't what I want.
Yeah, yeah, I mean that's isn't that always the case with life? Right?
Yeah?
We have to have to be glad that it happened, not sad that it's over, and so forth, be happy with the film you got, and yeah, be be glad that it left while people were still wanting it to stay. But of course the counter argument there is, oh, well, I guess you didn't need aliens. I guess you didn't need terminator too. I guess you didn't need scanners to Well maybe we didn't need scanners too, But at any rate, there needed scanner cop We did did we do We didn't do scanner cop?
No, we didn't do it. On the show I said we needed scanner, we.
Needed scanner cop and scanners too. Was the the the the the bridge? So yeah, I mean it all works out in the wash for.
Sure, all right, Well, so you want me to do this last one from Jeff? Sure, all right, Jeff says a subject line bad to the Bones, and note, by the way, this came up probably in response to our episode on Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, because it's about Ray Harry Housen. That movie has a bunch of great stop motion effects by Ray Harry Housen, including some skeleton ghouls which are raised up out of a
bonfire by the Witch Queens and Obia. They're sent to destroy Sindbad, which leads to a cool sword fight scene. Sinbad has to think quick and find a way to destroy the skeletons, which are impervious to being stabbed obviously because they're kind of skeletons. And I think that sent us on a good tangent about skeleton warriors and various things you always end up finding some in your D and D. Right, Yeah, well that's exactly what this emails about.
Jeff says, greetings, Joe and Rob, regarding the recent discussion of Clackety Harry House and skeletons. In my first D and D campaign as a kid, we received a standard issue in assigned mission to collect a magical something or other from a nearby dungeon. We had spent days creating characters with cool powers like talking to squirrels and creating sparkly light shows, but we didn't pay enough attention to
including the required party beefcake Rob. Is this a standard D and D term or is this is this a Jeff ism here? I assume Jeff is referring to like a tank character or something.
Ah, yeah, this is not terminology we use at our table, but my table is not exactly maybe a great snapshot of what all gamers are doing and talking about.
Yeah, anyway, what I could be wrong, but what I imagine Jeff means there is like, yes, a damage dealing and absorbing character, a fighter or something. Yeah yeah, tank, yeah, Jeff says. By the time we got to the dungeon entrance, we had already had the crap kicked out of us by some dumb creatures who were not impressed with ventriloquism or the ability to pick pockets.
Some low roll.
Yeah. As we approached, a bunch of skeletons came charging out at us like ants from a disturbed ant hill. The cleric, happy to finally get something fun to do did a turn undead on them, but due to our low level, it didn't destroy them, but it did make them flee, and for the first time none of us got hurt. Rob Can you do a quick Encyclopedia entry on turn undead? That's it's a cleric ability.
Yes, yes, we have pretty standard ability of good holy characters to just make lower level undead, you know, drop and run or drop. In general, it can and at some point it can ramp up to being destroyed undead. I never play a cleric though, so I don't have a lot of like hands on experience with it.
But so, like the standard effect is that you get some zombies or skeletons or whatever, you do turn undead on them and they like drop their weapons and run away.
Yeah you can do, yeah they run away, or again you just destroy them, like, yeah, they just can't stand against the Cross or the Pentagram or whatever kind of holy item and deity you represent.
Okay, Jeff goes on. We discovered the dungeon was infested with skeletons, so we worked out a plan to quietly enter, make a bunch of noise, run screaming back outside to draw out the skeletons, have the cleric turn them and repeat. Because turn on dead was an ability and not a spell, we could do that all day, which we did so, meaning you have a limited number of spell slots that you would use up if it were a spell, but it's not like that. You can just keep doing it
over and over. And I like this because this is like a video game cheese strategy, but you're doing it in a tabletop setting, which Finn, you know, when I'm playing like a single player video game, I do. I don't know if I want to admit this, but I often find myself just figuring out little like cheese strategies, like how do I get the enemies to just funnel into like a near corridor where I can fight them
more easily, And you know that just happens. Sometimes you find your way into like trying to find easier ways to get through encounters, even if it's not what the game developers probably intended, because they wanted you to have a more kind of like challenging and thrilling way of getting through. I don't know, we just tend to want to find an easier way to do something.
I guess it works in real life exactly. Of course, we're going to solve problems in a virtual world the same way.
But I don't really have that problem in tabletop ore like, I'm not usually looking for a cheese strategy when I'm playing D and D with my friends.
Well, D and D is special, and by DND, I'm just referring to all social role playing games like this and that it is social. So on one hand, you are trying to beat, defeat an enemy, or overcome a particular challenger in an and or system, but you're also in theory and hopefully trying to collectively tell a really good story with your friends. So if you go just total cheese mode, you might be ignoring the storytelling or ignoring the friends, the latter being the worse of the
two to ignore. So yeah, it has to be just the right balance.
So Jeff goes on to explain the result of this turn on dead cheese strategy. We were then able to move through the dungeons slowly and cautiously, on the lookout for traps and curses, without constant fear of attack and completely lacking in dramatic tension. There you go. We eventually found the loot and headed back for our reward. If you've ever DMD a party of rule hacking players like that,
you can probably see where this is going. We got back to town, which was in chaos and burning to the ground as the civilians had been slaughtered by wave after wave of violent skeletons who had been driven from their home looking for revenge on the living. So we didn't get the reward or very many experience points, but we did certainly gain real life wisdom from an experience. Don't f with the module there you go. I mean,
I think that's exactly what you were saying. Ron getting in the way of the spirit of the storytelling sometimes exerts. Sometimes it invites a kind of karmic reaction from the DM.
Yeah, but I mean, I don't know, it's like it's totally about the table and what the whole vibe is. Like maybe that's exactly what needs to be happened. And it was the greatest gaming experience of all time for everybody because that's what they were in the mood for. So there's you know, there's no ones that way that it needs to be for everybody.
Yeah, and then Jeff has a very nice note at the end. Jeff says on a personal note, I wanted to extend my deepest sympathies to Rob in his time of loss. We all owe his mother a great debt, both for taking on one of the world's most important occupations referring to teaching, and for raising Rob, whose hard work does so much to soothe people going through tough times or just trying to make their way through the daily grind. Props to mom for making the world a better place.
Jeff, Oh, thank you, Jeff, that's very sweet.
I appreciate it.
And again heard from numerous other listeners out there, and you know I appreciate all your kind words. All right, Well, at this point, I guess it's time to go ahead and close up the old mailbag for today, but we will be back later. Once again, we are on the cusp of diving into October. I know it, we're only halfway through September, but that's where we are. It's about to be October everyone, So that's going to be all sorts of cool October topics, October weird house cinema selections.
On that note, like, we're putting together the list now, so if you are just really gung ho for a particular October weird House cinema selection, or certainly a particular core episode of stuff to blow your mind or things to feature on the Monster fact or the artifact. Now is definitely the time to go ahead and start pestering us with those suggestions, because we're putting the list together right now.
Can I say what the October weird house vibe is? I think, without us ever making this explain or doing this on purpose, I think during October we lean more toward classic supernatural horror more so than we do in other times of the year, where we might go more kind of sci fi or fantasy, or throughout the rest of the year. I feel like it's more common that the horror we do has a kind of sci fi flavor to it, or might be one of these other
subgenres body horror or something like that. But in October that's the time for like witches and ghosts and vampires, that sort of thing. Do you have the same feeling, Yeah?
Yeah, And it's again, we don't have like a list that we check off physically every time, but that does seem to be how it works out.
Yeah, yeah, So we're not trying to be rigid about that. But I think that is the general vibe if y'all are making suggestions, which again are totally welcome.
Definitely a time for gothic car that's for sure.
Yeah, especially if it's gothic horror that gets really weird. That's a sweet spot.
Yeah, we'll inevitably do a film that has one of the big names of horror films of yesteryear, like a Vincent Price or Christopher Lee or Cushing and so forth. So certainly if there's a film featuring any of those individuals, like, yeah, let us know which one you think should be on our play. Just a reminder to everyone out there that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast. Core episodes in Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form
episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays. That's the time to set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.